CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/21/2017

This early 60s Robert Benson photograph of Stan Brakhage working on the Prelude to his five-film masterpiece, Dog Star Man, is reproduced from Metaphors on Vision, Anthology Film Archives and Light Industry’s new edition of Brakhage’s iconic theoretical statement, originally published in 1963 by Jonas Mekas as a special issue of Film Culture magazine designed by George Maciunas. “The artist has carried the tradition of vision and visualization down through the ages,” Brakhage wrote. “In the present time a very few have continued the process of visual perception in its deepest sense and transformed their inspirations into cinematic experiences. They create a new language made possible by the moving picture image. They create where fear before them has created the greatest necessity. They are essentially preoccupied by and deal imagistically with—birth, sex, death, and the search for God.”